The Weblog Review

When I think of Japan, the last thing that comes to mind is the blues.



The Blues Blog is part of Tokyo-Blues.com, which is a site about the blues scene in Japan. While the main part of the site is full of loads of information ranging from interviews from BB King and Dr. John, to concert tours, the blog is updated regularly about any news related to blues.

Launched in January of 2003, The Blues Blog is still new to the blogging world. But from reading up to today’s post, it looks like it has a promising future. Les, who runs the site keeps his readers informed about upcoming gigs around the country of Japan, links to articles relevant to the blues music scene and new album releases by noteworthy artists.

Visually, the layout of the blog is a standard Blogger template. I think the structure of the posts could be improved a bit. They seemed a bit messy, but that could be easily fixed by doing a bit of organizing. Apart from that the writing is fairly easy to read and not too wordy at all, which is a plus.

What makes this blog stand out from the thousands of other blogs out there is it has a completely different topic and is informative for a subject many may not be aware of. I think this is good site and also a unique one, which is often hard to find. Once in a while you find them and it’s quite a refreshing read.
BluesBlog

Les made a smart choice when picking colors for The Blues Blog – it’s primarily different shades of blue!

Each entry starts the same way, usually “Woke up this morning…” or “Woke up yesterday morning…” and then the rest of the entry completes the sentence and moves on. I love the unique perspective given by the location – Japan doesn’t seem like a blues-heavy country, but Les has lots to share anyway. It’s also nice to see a topical blog that actually stays on topic most of the time, too.

The yellow-on-grey is kind of dreary and hard to read, and the text is awfully small. Graphics are few and far between, though, so it’s easier to focus on the words without being distracted by pictures. There seem to be some problems with links within the archives, but all posts are accessible if you try hard enough to find them. The links list is quite short, but the sidebar has a cool random quote about music every time you reload the page.BluesBlog

I love it when weblogs don’t expect their readers to have expectations of grandeur when they visit. Matthew points this out right away as he very quickly explains “the purpose of which is entirely undefined and extremely meaningless”. No claims to perfect posting or thought provoking entries here, and with that in mind, readers don’t expect anything less then just Matthew’s own journal.

The very first post at the time of this review dealt with the originality of weblogs, and how the standard templates that seem to get passed around the internet get so very tiresome. It was refreshing to see Matthew with a template all of his own, which had a very simplistic navigation method, and I wasn’t distracted by any of the current trend in unnecessary javascript or flash tools that sometimes get thrown right into.

The story matrix is a definite highlight of the site. This is the portion of the site where any reader can go in and add a line, paragraph, or even chapter to the already involved story that’s been written entirely in that fashion. It’s quite interesting so far, and will only get better as different people continue to contribute. Go ahead and add to the mix!

Other parts of the site include a very brief bio section, which does give us the basics on Matthew. Of course, there’s your typical computer “stuff” with the Technical and .Net portions of the site. And one would be remiss to leave out the obligatory “Donate” portion.

Now, I could only find archives dating back to January 24th, which was when this site first kicked off. Having each individual day linked along the left hand side isn’t something I’m very keen on, and I hope that Matthew has a plan for those archives in mind once Wombleweb has been up and running for a while longer. The archives were a bit disorganized in the manner that they were grouped, but that’s just a personal preference of my own.

I had trouble staying focused on the actual weblog content at Wombleweb. With a great weblog, I can start at the very first post and make heads or tails of how everything relates or at least make some type of a connection where I want to read more. I couldn’t do that with the entries here. They’re not poorly written at all, but they just don’t make this the type of weblog where you grow attached or find some magnetic connection to the writer. The entries are more along the lines of just sporadic entries about random thoughts.

For an occasional read from time to time, I would definitely recommend Wombleweb to readers. If you’re looking for something to draw you in and really want to come back every single day, this may not be the place.

wombleweb story matrix

Finally a site that I can immediately identify with, stuffed with honesty from the first line I see;
“Welcome to my weblog. I whinge a lot but my heart is in the right place… “
This is one of the few websites that I feel doesn’t maintain a false pretense of blogger glory. The clean, but typical ‘blog’ layout is used wisely (unlike some horrors I’ve seen in the past, and for once, the sidebar isn’t longer than the actual blog. (However it would be suggestable to archive weekly or monthly rather than daily)

Reading on I was delighted to grasp a taste of Matthew’s daily life consisting of a mixture of current affairs, daily excursions and the trivialities of life, all nicely illustrated with relevant pictures. I particularly identified with the boredom entry.. and titillated by the picture to go with it! A paragraph of speculative nonsense always calms the soul.

Focusing on the story matrix, an interactive story generator, the idea is highly amusing however proven to be effective. I’d love to see more of this on the website.

Target audience would involve anyone with two eyes and a brain to process it! Wombleweb provides a taste of life in Wimbledon (without the false Womble pretenses of course..)wombleweb story matrix

You and Me and Wainbows. Interesting title. I have no clue what to expect about this, other than it might reference three people (You = the reader, Me = the author, and Wainbows = some random person). But with that in mind I launched myself into this weblog.

Normally I like to pace myself when it comes to discussing a weblog. Some good points, some bad, all mixed together. I really only found one bad thing with this site, and it was the design. I like the images of the cats at the top (reference to the author), but then the rest of the design has gone to hell on the main page. Stuff is misaligned and it just doesn’t look good. Going into the archives we have yet another design, and this one is much better, but not original. So that is the bad part.

Everything else with this weblog is amazing. You cannot find another flaw in this site. The writing is outstanding, funny, and thought provoking all at the same time. Of course the first post I read was a very misconstrued version of an email I sent to her about reviewing her site. But it set the tone for the rest of the reading.

Recently she is posting about her trip to Spain which is pretty cool. She is going into a fair amount of detail for what she is doing there. I imagine that the weblog combined with pictures she has taken will make a good memory.

One of the more interesting things I noticed is that she really re-reads her weblog. Almost as if she is a reader herself, and not an author. Then she likes to comment on it. Personally I think she should just let it flow and only go back to read the comments.

This site should be nominated for the “Best kept secret” weblog with the bloggies next year. It has everything that an enjoyable blog needs and then some. I really hope that she does not take it down as she is thinking about doing as this truly is a diamond in the rough.

You and Me and Wainbows